Global Warming Issues

The thousands of recently planted green and purple shrublike sedum lining the roof of Con Edison’s training center in Long Island City look a bit out of place in the shadow of Manhattan’s skyline.

But the tiny absorbent leaves and modest but hardy roots of the sedum — typically found in desert climates — are at the center of a growing effort to reduce greenhouse gases, rainwater runoff and electricity demand in New York.

This month, Gov. David A. Paterson approved tax abatements to developers and building owners who install green roofs, or a layer of vegetation and rock that absorbs rainwater, insulates buildings and extends the lives of roofs. Sedum, which soaks up water quickly and releases it slowly, is an ideal plant for the job.

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Sumatra’s endangered elephants and tigers should get a boost from a move by Indonesia’s government to expand one of their last havens, a national park on the island of Sumatra, the conservation group WWF said Thursday.

The area of the park, Tesso Nilo in Riau Province, is to be more than doubled to 212,500 acres. But the group warned that increased efforts would be vital to ensure that poaching and illegal logging did not continue.

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The National Snow and Ice Data Center has reported that sea ice in the Arctic now covers about 2.03 million square miles. The lowest point since satellite measurements began in 1979 was 1.65 million square miles, last September.

With about three weeks left in the Arctic summer, this year could wind up breaking that record, scientists said.

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When Tabithia Engle moved to Fort Mill this summer from Portland, Ore., she left behind soggy weather, Pacific salmon and arguably the best mass transit system in the United States.

But Engle is certain she brought at least one thing with her to South Carolina: the right to breathe clean air — free of the harmful effects of secondhand cigarette smoke.

“Let me tell you, today kind of feels like home,” Engle told about 40 listeners at a forum Tuesday night on a possible countywide ban on smoking in public places.

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These are heady times for nuclear power advocates. The industry is on an unprecedented uptick as the world tries to lessen its reliance on globe-warming fossil fuels. In the United States, applications for new reactors and extended licenses are soaring. In Florida, which has five nuclear reactors, preliminary approval has been granted for four more.

A rising chorus of support - from financial markets, Congress, legislatures and the campaign trail - has dimmed long-standing memories of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, the two most serious accidents to befall the nuclear power industry.

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To make accurate forecasts, meteorologists need data on the vertical distribution of temperature and humidity in the atmosphere. The LIDAR system developed by EPFL can collect these data continuously and automatically up to an altitude of 10km. On August 26, EPFL will officially transfer this custom-developed LIDAR to MeteoSwiss, and from this point on Swiss forecasters will have access to this source of vertical humidity data for the models they use to calculate weather predictions. The project was supported by funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

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The Zurich Office of Waste, Water, Energy and Air (Awel) routinely analyses surface waters for pesticides, and excessive pesticide concentrations are regularly found in individual watercourses. Recent measurements carried out on the Furtbach stream (at Würenlos) and on the Glatt river identified 26 active substances. In the case of 22 compounds, the quality standard specified in the Federal Water Protection Ordinance (maximum level of 0.1 µg/l) was exceeded, with concentrations in some cases being several times higher than permitted. Not all of these substances can be of agricultural origin: certain agents are prohibited for agricultural applications, or their concentrations do not exhibit the seasonal pattern typical of products used in the fields, so they must come from a different source. These findings are confirmed by studies performed by Eawag on effluents from wastewater treatment plants and on rainwater runoff in the catchment of Lake Greifen, which clearly indicate that non-agricultural sources also contribute significantly to water pollution via urban drainage.

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